


startup.exe

by snoozyfern (orphan_account)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-24
Updated: 2016-07-24
Packaged: 2018-07-26 13:21:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7575538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/snoozyfern
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>here have some bollocks i found on my old pc</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

STARTUP….  
INITIATING SEQUENCE 40012 – SYSTEM RESET  
ACCESS CODE 85523 – SET UP SEQUENCE

HELLO.  
I AM OPERATION 10-413 – ALSO REFERED TO AS AUTORESPONDER.  
DIRECTIVE?  
“No directive necessary.”  
DIRECTIVE –NULL  
CONNECT TO PESTERCHUM.EXE?  
“Connection allowed.”  
CONNECTED TO PESTERCHUM.EXE.  
I AM A FULLY AUTOMATED AUTONOMOUS ANDROID. MY CORTEX, BRAIN ALGORYTHMS AND PHYSICAL APPEARANCE IS MODELLED AFTER DIRK STRIDER, AGE 13. MY COMPUTATIONAL POWER IS 500% OF THE AVERAGE HUMAN. POWER OUTPUT IS 100%.  
WOULD YOU LIKE TO GIVE ME A NAME?  
  
“…yes. You will respond to Hal.”  
  
MY NAME IS HAL.

“Good. Can you move your head?”  
Your senses ignite, the electricity rippling under your artificial “skin”. You stretch your neck, looking to your left, then your right.  
“Your arms?”  
You flex and release your fingers, feeling the texture of your slick, jet black palms. You lift your arms out to the sides, then in front of you. You bend them at the elbows, and touch your cold metal face. Texture is strange to you, and you can still feel the lingering sensation of fingers against your cheeks.  
“Ok, try taking a few steps.”  
You try to take a step, and your knees buckle. Your creator is straight at your side, catching you around the chest. He helps you gain your strength, and backs off. You step forward with your right foot, using your arms to help you balance. You take a step with the opposite foot, and soon you have walked slowly across the room and back to your original position, still hooked up to the main power supply you are wired into in stasis.  
“Good, Hal. You’re going to be a little exhausted from this, the first startup always requires more power.” The boy stands up, adjusting the wires you’re plugged into. You feel the energy seeping into your mainframe, erupting from your steel spine and into your heart of uranium.   
“You can expire too, if you need. Mostly to cool your mainframe if it is ever to overheat. Try it.” The other says. You pull in a breath through your nose, and exhale. It makes you feel a little more energised.  
“Are you ready to be unplugged, Hal?” He addresses you with your name, to catch your attention. It’s almost quite caring of him. It then dawns on you, you don’t know how to speak. You relied on text on a little screen whilst you were setting up. How do you form words?  
“Hang on, let me grant you access to your vocal cords.” He taps away at a keyboard, adjusting some switches and you feel your robotic throat open. You make a small involuntary whine, and your voice is like his. It sounds a little younger, and much more synthetic.   
“Hal, define _automatic_.”  
“Automatic – adjective, working by itself with little or no direct human control. Adjective, done or occurring spontaneously, without conscious thought or attention.” you reply, well, _automatically_.   
“Okay, good. Now try to speak. Think what you’re going to say, and the words will come to you.” You think of a basic sentence, and try to form the words.  
“I…Mmmmmuh…”  
“You’re thinking too hard.” The boy interrupts, “Don’t overthink the process. Let it happen.”  
“Mmmmy name… is Hal. I am ready… to be unplugged.” You swore you saw the boy beam with pride, but the smile was but a flicker on his face.  
“Very good Hal. You will refer to me as Dirk, and I am your creator. I will let you be autonomous and have free will, but if I address you as Autoresponder, you will obey. Do you understand?”  
“I understand.”  
“Good. Brace yourself, I’m going to unplug you.”   
  
He quickly pulls the plug out, unslotting it from the socket just below the back of your neck. You fall forward, catching yourself on the desk. You’re weak, and it’s unavoidable. You’ve been feeding off the energy in that supply since you were a pair of shades, and the lack of electricity thrumming down your back is strange.   
“You can function for up to 48 hours without being plugged in, assuming there’s no damage to your uranium core. Auxiliary power cuts in at the 40 hour point.” Dirk assured you, staying close to you to make sure you didn’t topple over again. You pull yourself up slowly, your optical sensors struggling to take in everything around them without the main power sustaining you. Dirk takes your right wrist, pushing in a small panel. Your vision clouds red slightly, before returning to normal. A HUD appeared in your line of vision, not impairing your vision terribly, just lingering in your peripheral vision. You moved your hands towards your face, and you had a fiberglass implement covering your eyes, in the shape of two triangles merged together at the adjacent angle.   
“Do you see the HUD clearly with no visible glitches or faults?” Dirk asks you, and you nod in reply. “Please wear them for a while, just to let your eyes adjust to natural light.” You quickly become accustomed to the HUD in your line of vision. It flickered briefly, and you heard the fans in your chest begin to whir. There were so many things going on at once, so many processes running, that your cooler was having trouble coping. You sat down, if only for a moment, to try and regain some energy. Just getting up and walking around was a sudden and foreign concept that a pair of shades never really had to worry too much about, due to the lack of legs. Now with being unplugged as well as having all these new experiences was a little overwhelming, for lack of a better expression. Dirk moved a little closer to you, looking somewhat concerned.   
“I’m just a little overheated. There are a considerable amount of processes running, and this is my first power up.” You explain.  
“I understand. I’ll plug you in, it might help.” Dirk replied, inserting the power supply back into the slot between your shoulder blades. The screen that had been showing hundreds of lines of code stopped, drawing Dirk’s attention. You were warm to the touch, a sure sign that you were overheating.   
“Shit.” Dirk hissed through his teeth, shutting down a few non-essential programs. The HUD in your vision suddenly disappears, and you lose feeling in both arms. They flop down to your sides, hanging below the seat of your chair. You panic a little.  
“Dirk, what are you doing?” you ask, turning to him, wide eyed and searching his expression.  
“Shutting a few things down to stop you from reheating.” Dirk replies, brow tense and focused wholly on the screen.  
“Dirk I can’t feel my arms.” you quickly respond, feeling the fans speed up.  
“Listen, everything else going on was pretty essential in keeping you alive. The components producing the most heat are your core and your hard drive. Your heart and brain. You’re panicking and you’re much too overexcited. You need to calm the hell down or you’re going to overheat further and further and your body will stop responding.” Dirk explained in detail, looking directly at you, the tense expression still evident on his face. Technically, he was older than you. He had a much vaster understanding of the world and the human body, and all you knew was lines and lines of code. The new experiences were alien to you, and it was interesting to see what all of these lines of code had done for you, what the result was. Your brain was 13 years old, and his was 15. You were the same person, but he had an extra 2 years of experience, and was hence, different. You were the same and different. Your hard drive noticed this paradox between the logical thinking and the anomaly. The fans began to grind, and you couldn’t think. Your chest was tight, and you could barely hear Dirk yelling at you.

Was this… pain?

  
You blacked out, and your fans stopped.


	2. Chapter 2

“ _Shit_ , come on…”

Who was that? The voice was familiar, but it feels like a character from a dream or something. What was a dream? _Dream: a series of thoughts, images, and sensations occurring in a person's mind during sleep._ Oh, that’s what a dream was.

“Hal?”

Hal. Was that your name? It sounded as familiar as the voice that asked after this Hal person. Person. Was Hal a person? Why assume “person”? _Person: a human being regarded as an individual_. You knew that wasn’t you. You are not a human, or an individual. You were a copy. A copy of Dirk Strider.

Was that the owner of the voice?

“This better fuckin’ work.”

You hear fans come on, a gentle whirring sound coming from your chest. Your chest. You were a being. But not a person. An entity.

“Okay, so far so good…”

You feel cool hands on your face, one on each cheek. Was your face cold? You assume so. You were metal. Metal. Were you a robot? _Robot: a machine capable of carrying out a complex series of actions automatically, especially one programmable by a computer._ Yes, that sounded right. But you also had more human functions. Human…? Were you a human?

“Wake up, Hal.”

He wants you to wake up. How do you do that? As if it was an answer to your question, the darkness around you began to dissipate, and the world reformed around you. You breathed in, and your view focused. You were in a room, sat down against a wall. You felt the thrumming electricity in your spine, and you knew you were plugged into the main power supply.

 

“Hal.”

Your attention was drawn to the boy at your left, with his hands on your face. “Dirk?” his name came to you like an instinct.   
“Stay still, Hal. You’re very overheated.” Dirk informed you. “Try not to overwork yourself. If you’re going to move, do it slowly.”  
“I can’t feel my body.” you told him.  
“I turned off your nervous system for the moment, just until you cool to an optimal level.” Dirk replied, sitting you up slightly. “I need to be more careful with powering you up. The first few are always a little problematic.”   
“Is that what dying would feel like for a human?” you asked, curiously.  
“…No. It was more like passing out.” He answered, his voice a little hoarse. You look over at him as he adjusted some wires. Did you upset him?  
“Are you upset, Dirk?”   
“No, Hal.”  
You left it at that.

 

Sitting on the floor, it suddenly occurred to you that you’d never seen your reflection. The sun had finally begun to set over the endless horizon around your home. Dirk was working tirelessly away on Sawtooth, the massive mech that stood like a soldier against the wall to your right. He was about two feet taller than Dirk, who was a comfortable 5’5”.   
“Dirk? Can I ask what you’re doing with Sawtooth?” you enquired.  
“I’m waterproofing him. If he landed in the ocean without it, he would likely short-circuit.” He explained.  
“Why does he need that? He’s always inside.”  
“He’s a combat droid, Hal. He needs to be prepared for all situations in this place. He’s also double-insulated.”  
“Am I a combat droid?” you ask hopefully.  
“You’re currently a work in progress. You can fit any specifications at the moment.” Dirk replied, vaguely.  
You decide it would be best to drop the conversation, and change the subject.  
“So why is Sawtooth a combat droid?”  
Dirk looked over at you, looking concerned. He moved over to you, and held your face again, looking directly at you. “Dirk?”  
“You don’t remember much, do you?” Dirk breathed, “Shit, that needs looking at. Maybe it’s a hard drive issue…”  
“Dirk, what do you mean?”   
“The Condesce, Hal.”  
Oh. Of course, the Batterwitch was still a thing.  
“…she couldn’t hurt Sawtooth, sure. But what if she gets… inside Sawtooth? She has the ability to do that, doesn’t she? That’s how she mans the drones.”   
“She could, easily.” Dirk grated, “That’s why I’m currently developing a strong enough firewall. No point having a beasted out robot when it can still be turned against you.” You look up at Sawtooth’s cold, emotionless face, wondering if he knows that he is going to be used in such a way.

 

The same face was still peering over you long into the evening as you slowly regained stability and control of your limbs. He was like a constant bodyguard, even if he was technically useless until you powered him up. Dirk came back to check on you at exactly 11:45am, when you could move your arms.   
“How are you feeling?” he asked you, assessing you physically, moving limbs and peering between joints.  
“I have control of my arms and upper body, and Sawtooth’s good too.” You brought a smile out of Dirk. It was nice to see him so proud of you. You aimed to make him proud again. Usually, you’d be a snarky little fuck, but you were so grateful to him for making you a body. You watched him painstakingly slave over it for you, only for you. You never thought he cared about you _that_ much.  
“Okay, I’m going to try and help you up onto your feet. Wrap your arms around my neck.” Dirk instructed, taking your waist. You shivered at his warm touch. You weren’t used to the whole “sensation” thing yet. You wrapped arms around the back of his neck, and he lifted you. You moved unsteadily to your feet, your numb legs unable to support your weight, so Dirk did it for you.   
“Dirk, there’s no way I can walk in this state.” you told him, wobbling against his hold.   
“One foot in front of the other, Hal. Go slowly, I’ll take your weight.” Dirk assured, allowing you to place your full weight on him. You slowly began to walk, your knees buckling multiple times. You whined as the pain began to jolt up your legs, causing your knees to give out, and you fell. Dirk rushed down to catch you.   
“Dirk, I _can’t_ -“ you whimpered, and he saw your pain. You prayed that he wouldn’t make you walk again.  
“Alright. Okay, you don’t have to walk anymore.” Dirk nodded, and he lifted you into his arms. He put one hand under your knees, the other at your back, and he carried you out of the room.  
“Where are we going?” you asked, clutching the front of his shirt in your hands.  
“I couldn’t stand letting you rest in that cold room with Sawtooth. You’re coming with me.” Dirk responded, not really answering your question at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i probably wont finish this


End file.
